When I was twelve or thirteen, if you liked something that was outside of your friend group genre, you had to rationalize and explain it in some way. It's totally irrelevant, I think, now. I don't think anybody cares. Not young people, at least. Maybe journalists.
There were no good bands in my town. You know, there's like this magic town where every kid started a band in high school, and half of them were good and have careers based on relationships built at that time? That wasn't what my life was like at all.
My first super-worn-out tapes were Michael Jackson's 'Bad' and the soundtrack to 'Dirty Dancing.' The soundtrack to 'Dirty Dancing' is actually really phenomenal.
Music, even if I ended up doing something different or do end up doing something different in the long run, it's just something that is life blood. If I'm not participating in some way, I feel like I'm wasting my time.
I've never been to a psychiatrist so have never gotten to the point where I could be formally diagnosed with any disorder. But I definitely have anxiety.
I'm trying to use people like Meredith Monk and Philip Glass and Terry Riley as the backing tracks for new pop songs. It's really hard trying to use the format and write a pop song on top of avant-garde music, so we'll see. It could be cool, or it could totally flop.
I spent a long part of my childhood repressing my more animalistic desire systems, and in a way, it permits me to do some of the stuff that I would want to be doing in a way that's more comfortable and doesn't break my internal rules. It expands the realm of possibility.
I did a lot of choral music in high school, and that was kind of my primary, stable outlet for music because I didn't feel comfortable being a soloist. It was a cool, safe space for me musically.
